Is there such a thing as a ‘Pentecostal philosophy’? James K. A. Smith says there is. They don’t necessarily talk about it in ways we are accustomed to, but he says they have one. And here are its major elements […]
Christianity
Does Jesus Oppose the Death Penalty?
For some reason it is hard for people, including even most evangelicals, to imagine Jesus supporting a death penalty for any sort of crime. On the other hand, if He claimed to be God the Son, “I and the Father […]
Heterosexual Cohabitation and The Church – After Obergefell
The historic church, evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox, has taken a dim view of ‘cohabitation,’ which used to be called ‘shacking up’ or ‘living in sin.’ The faithful churches in fact generally try to deny the Sacrament to those in cohabitation. […]
Some Things People Can’t See or Understand Anymore
In my last post I wrote about how the secular mind can no longer understand the difference between ‘forgiveness’ and ‘tolerance-acceptance-inclusion’. Things like this are not a surprise; in 1Corinthians 2:14, Paul informs us that “The natural person does not […]
Forgiveness and ‘Tolerance’ in Charleston
There has been some coverage about the ‘forgiveness’ offered to Dylann Roof by some of the Christian parishioners of Emanuel AME church that survived his attack. Matt Schiavenza in the The Atlantic describes this. [For some other responses as to why […]
‘Freedom From Speech’ and Freedom From Other Things
“Freedom of speech” has been a slogan in America and the Western World for some time. But how to explain the rise of “political correctness,” which has not much affected our civil law, but has affected policies on campus, and, […]
The Upper Middle Class Versus the 1%?
Matt Miller, Californian commentator, comments in his book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas that it probably will be the upper middle class, or ‘lower upper’ as he calls it, that will lead the opposition to the so called 1%, and […]
C.S. Lewis and the World of Modern Technology
C.S. Lewis, in his important apologetic work The Problem of Pain, tried to envision an alternative pain-free universe [Chapter 2]: The permanent nature of wood which enables us to use it as a beam also enables us to use it […]
The Strange American Inversion of the Liturgical Year
Historically in Christian liturgy, Advent was supposed to be a sort of penitential time, a little Lent leading up to Christmas, as Lent led up to Easter. Anglican hymnbooks have an Advent section and a Christmas section. Songs like “O […]
Hasn’t it Always Been Babylon?
Rod Dreher, one of our favorites on this site, has written a column called “From Israel to Babylon” of which the sources are largely drawn from the Southern Baptists. The younger Southern Baptists expect to be a religious minority, which, […]